Sphinx of Taharqo (1/2) from A History of the World in 100 Objects

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If you were to ask which country the River Nile belongs to, most people would immediately say Egypt. But in fact, of course, the Nile is a river that can be claimed by nine different African countries, and as water resources get scarcer, the question of its ownership today is a burning political issue.

A critical fact of modern Egypt's life is that most of the Nile is actually in Sudan. Egypt has always been wary of its huge southern neighbour but, for most of its history, it has been by far the stronger of the two. But there was a moment, around three thousand years ago, when for a century or so, it all looked very different.

"It really was the centre of a very powerful vibrant civilisation in the heart of Africa - black Africa." (Zeinab Badawi)

"And it was one of the major civilisations of the ancient world, although it's always seen as being on the periphery of that world." (Derek Welsby)

This week I'm investigating the world around 700 BC. Even though populations were tiny - only about one per cent of today's world population occupied the whole of the globe then - large-scale conflicts were frequent and bitter. War was everywhere, and one of the features of the period was the conquest of long-established centres of wealth and civilisation by poorer peoples living on the edge. In the case of Egypt, this meant that the mighty land of the pharaohs was conquered and ruled by its southern neighbour - what is now northern Sudan, but was then called the kingdom of Kush.

I'm walking through the galleries of the British Museum heading for a stone sphinx. Sphinxes - statues with a lion's body and a man's head - are creatures of myth and legend, but they're also one of the great symbols of Egyptian royalty and power. The most famous of all, of course, being the Great Sphinx at Giza.

Here it is now and, compared with the one at Giza, this sphinx is very small - it's about the size of a spaniel - but it is particularly interesting, because it's not just a hybrid of a man and a lion, but a fusion of Egypt and Kush. It's made out of sandy grey granite, and it's beautifully preserved. The muscular lion's back, the mane of hair and the powerful outstretched paws are all classically Egyptian - but it's not a typical Egyptian pharaoh's face, because this man is unquestionably a black African, and this sphinx is the image of a black pharaoh. Hieroglyphics on the sphinx's chest spell it out: this is a portrait of the great King Taharqo, the fourth pharaoh to rule over the combined kingdoms of Kush and Egypt.

Kush occupied what is now the north half of Sudan. For thousands of years, Egypt had looked on its southern Kushite neighbour essentially as a rich but troublesome colony, that could be exploited for its raw materials - there was gold and ivory and, very important, slaves. In this almost colonial relationship, Egypt was very much the master. But in 728 BC, the balance of power flipped. Egypt had become fragmented and weak, and the Kushite king, Piankhi, took the opportunity to send his armies north, and capture the cities of Egypt one by one, until finally the north was quashed, and the Kushites were in charge of an empire that ran roughly from modern Khartoum to modern Alexandria. And in order to govern this new state, they created a new national identity, a hybrid that would combine both Egypt and Kush.

Taharqo, represented in the British Museum sphinx, is the most important of all the Kushite kings.